Kittens claw their way to win Middle School Championship

Since the inception of the middle school league a few years ago, JCWP has always had a strong group that has done considerable well. That tradition was extended Saturday, as this year’s Kitten squad ended the season by beating CCP 19-6 and Storm 20-1 and finishing the season undefeated with a 6-0 record.

Saturday was a great cap on a tremendous season, as the Kittens were able to implement many of the things they had learned over the course of the season into the game. However, although the scores made both games seem like blowouts, the game against CCP started out very close. CCP had one extremely impressive lefthander (#16), and at first, the Kittens could not contain him and match up with him quick enough. His two goals, in addition to the panicking Kittens’ play, kept the game at a 2-2 tie through the first quarter. As the game continued, CCP continued to hang with the Kittens, primarily due to the play of #16. It was not until the Kittens started to communicate on offense before they were able to find the open man and bury the ball into the goal. In the second quarter, the Kittens began double-teaming #16, and from that point forward, he was ineffective and did not get many shots except for from near half. He was clearly an excellent player, but the Kittens did a pretty good job of matching up with him once they recognized that he was far and away their best player.

In the second game against Storm, the game went much more smoothly from the start. On the first play of the game, the swimoff, Michael Mcward won and once again scored a goal after continuing to drive toward the goal and getting a pass from Joey Buelter. At the end of the first quarter, the Kittens were up 7-1, and they were once again on their way toward victory. The Kittens did a pretty solid job of matching up defensively in this game, as they prevented Storm from getting the ball down onto their offensive side of half at least once because of their playing in the passing lanes.

Throughout the course of the game, the Kittens drew a number of kickouts. The good news was that most of the time, we recognized this fact and we even set-up. The only problem was we often ended up throwing the ball to the 2 and 3 positions (the positions right in front of the goal) with wet passes, and this caused us to lose a couple of good chances to score on the 6-on-5. Although it looked rough, we only started practicing the 6-on-5 explicitly this last week, so it was good to see the 6-on-5 look a little better than it had at times in the past, and the players at least knew what they were supposed to be doing. There still is some work, but with most things, there always is a little work that can be done.

So Saturday was a great end to the season. The player of the day was Michael Mcward for playing the best games of his life thus far, but in reality, the team looked very solid as a whole. Todd Losby did a nice job setting and directing traffic from the 2-meter position. Victor Castro was doing a great job communicating as well, and he played a very important role in shutting down #16 in game #1. Peter Brooks and Michael Kennedy did a really nice job of counter-attacking. Matt Marcouiller and Phil LePoidevin made some nice defensive plays, and Ryan Finkelstein did a nice job of push-dribbling when the other team was trying to drown him. This list is not to all-inclusive. I was happy with the efforts of our whole team in general. It can be challenging to play two games back to back, and the team did an excellent job of playing hard for both games and thoroughly dominating both.

In closing, thanks on another great season. I really enjoyed working with these guys, and I think they all learned a ton and hopefully had a lot of fun. We hope you all can make it to our last two practices this week on Wednesday and Thursday night.

Coach Ray